Through the Years
by CrossCountryChick16
Summary: Just a bunch of drabbles based on everyone's favorite almost-canon relationship: Royai, starting from when they were just teenagers. Contains hints of romance, not much more.


**I do not own the FMA manga, FMA anime, or FMA:B.**

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**Through the Years**

_**The Apprentice, 1900**_

There is only one tree within the confines of the Hawkeye home's yard.

It's a proud collection of interlacing roots and hardy bark, one of the only things on the property older than the Hawkeye name. Years of housing all sorts of animals and standing strong and tall through all sorts of storms have left the gentle giant weathered and teetering on the edge of the dark descent to death. However, it still manages to live on, one day at a time.

Master Hawkeye's daughter has always been especially fond of the tree. Perhaps it was the comforting shade the looming maple provided, or maybe the swing her father attached to a low-lying branch long ago, before even the death of his wife. Or, maybe, it was the fact that, under that very tree, her mother once told her all kinds of fantastical stories, depicting images of faraway lands and beautiful heroines who fought more gallantly than any old, typical knight in shining armor.

Now that her mother is gone, she'll have to stick with reading storybooks under the tree, hiding from her father's frightening research, all by her lonesome.

"Hi, there."

Or, maybe not.

Riza Hawkeye looks up from her book with a raised eyebrow. Thirteen years of living with a father like hers has left her much more hardened and serious than a young girl should be, so she can't help but look at the raven-haired boy before her with slight contempt, for that reason and because he so rudely tore her from her story.

He looks at her with his dark eyes, seemingly flustered under her unforgiving brown gaze, but obviously determined to hold her attention. "How are you today, Riza?"

She exhales slightly and closes her book. Unlike the rest of her father's alchemy apprentices, all of which didn't last more than a week, this fifteen year old but has been here for almost five months now and, unfortunately for Riza, has been trying unnaturally hard to become her friend.

"Same as when you asked me an hour ago, Mr. Mustang."

_**Waiting, 1902**_

Roy Mustang sat on the couch of the Hawkeye living room, elbows on his knees and his chin resting on his fists, staring at the front door.

A few hours ago, Riza had walked out of that door to go to town and run some errands. Mustang crosses his arms and sighs at the door.

_She should have been back by now._

"Mustang,"

Roy looks up at the sound of his teacher's voice, shocked to see him outside of his room and with his face out of his research notes. Roy stands up and bows to him.

"Sir," he greets, a bit taken aback out by the knowing glint in his master's light blue eyes.

Berthold Hawkeye eyes his apprentice with eyebrows raised and takes a sip from the mug of coffee he must have left his room to make. "Are you waiting up for my daughter?"

_**Get Back to Work, 1904**_

Roy just couldn't comprehend it.

As he sat as his desk, hovering over his scattered alchemy notes and trying to decipher the most recent, impossibly difficult equation his master gave him, he often finds himself forgetting his studies and wondering what it is about the young woman sitting across the room, book open in her lap, ankles crossed and lips slightly pursed as she reads, that he finds so distracting.

_**Flame Alchemy, 1905**_

She clutches her shirt as close as she could to her chest to prevent exposure, leaving only her back bare to his eyes.

She can only hear the scribbling of his pen against the pad in his hands and the steady exchange of air through his lips as he works. There are occasional grunts of frustration, said noises probably due to the mind-boggling amount of critical information her father crammed into a rather small code.

Then, silence.

Riza doesn't turn her head, but rather clears her throat. "Ehem, Mr. Mustang? Are you finished?"

She hears him make a noise of confusion before coughing rather awkwardly. His eyes trail down the slim curve of her spine, a bit of sweat beading at his hairline. He observes the pale skin rather than the red ink, noticing just how slim she actually is…

Roy finally tears his eyes away and sets them on his notes, something like heat crawling up his neck. "Er, no. I just got…distracted, is all."

_**A Ripple amongst Waves, 1906**_

The Hawkeye home has never felt so empty.

After her father's very recent death and Roy Mustang's leave for the military, Riza has felt very alone inside the weathered house. One morning, she rose early from bed and walked out to her tree, the only companion she has left at home. She sat under its comforting form and watched the sun rise, feeling fully at peace but painfully alone. When she returned to the inside of her room, she came upon the small card Mustang had given her before leaving.

"_You should take this; you can call me in the military if you need to."_

She thought about what he'd said, about how he hoped to utilize her father's research in his attempt to make the world a better place. For the first time in a while, she found herself smiling.

She clutches the card between her fingers and replays the words he said over and over in her mind. If he can make a difference, so can she.

It took her only two days to pack up her things, leave her home, and enlist in the military academy.

_**God-Forsaken, 1908**_

Major Mustang had all but reached the end of his rope.

Day after day, snap after snap, life after life. How much longer can one man go on, killing innocents with just a twitch of his fingers and a cringe of his heart? He can still see them, with the leaking crimson wounds and purple bruises across nearly every inch of their dark skin, their boiling red irises inhabiting black pupils shrunken in fear. He can't erase the image of how their eyes would radiate terror up until the end came, leaving their eyes unresponsive and cold, like weathered old stones. Most of the time, though, he couldn't even distinguish their eyes from the rest of the blackened, charred corpse.

He sits on an abandoned chunk of rubble and rubs his face with his hand. Sometimes, especially recently, he's feared that he's begun to lose himself.

"Mr. Mustang?"

He raises his head at the sound of his name being called, turning towards the source and summoning a smile, if for nothing else but her sake. While neither of them have ever been subjected to this kind of horror, her sheltered life prepared her much less than his had, as little a preparation as it may have been.

Her brown eyes lighten just slightly and a corner of her mouth rises in the subtlest of ways at his acknowledgement of her call.

"Hey, Riza."

_**A Revelation of Sorts, 1912**_

Colonel Mustang hugged his trench coat closer to his chest, wishing for a moment that the jacket had come with a hood.

The rain falls like nothing the man has ever seen before. The raindrops are akin to that of bullets plummeting from the sky, smacking against him, making him damper and damper as he walks, each drop a reminder that he's utterly impotent in this kind of weather. He can almost hear the shifty weather patterns laughing at him, the crafty devils giving him a clear sky in the morning, hinting at a day so beautiful that he'd decided to walk to work, then dropping this torrential rainfall, literally, on his broad shoulders.

Now he's left huddled into himself, shivering, his hair sticking to him as if he were drenched in glue. He wouldn't doubt that he could be mistaken for a wet dog in his current state.

Mustang pulls his collar even closer to his neck, willing his feet to navigate him through this storm faster. He keeps his head tilted towards the ground as he walks, determined not to allow the rain water to drench his face and fill his mouth. He really should look up, though, because, despite his usual smooth-as-silk demeanor, Roy Mustang has been known to be a bit of klutz when he isn't paying attentio-

Roy feels his arm bump rather roughly into someone else's shoulder. After years of combat and colliding with his enemies in the heat of battle, he can infer that, based on where the shoulder hit his arm and the lack of bulk to it, that he'd walked into a woman. Upon a quick glance at her face, he can see that she's a rather fetching woman at that.

Could he be more of an idiot?

"Sorry," he apologizes earnestly, putting on his usual womanizing expression; he tries to be charming and polite around women whenever necessary.

The pretty woman adjusts her blonde hair, the long streaks like woven strands of gold clinging damply to her shoulder, shining despite the darkness of the overcast sky. "Oh, it's not a big-" She blinks at him, eyelashes clinging to a few misshapen raindrops, the streetlights around them making them glisten and accent her amber-brown eyes. "_Colonel?_"

Roy takes a solid two steps back and analyses the woman's face for a second time. While the first time he'd observed her he'd noted her long hair, attractive brown irises, and feminine curve of her facial features, he now recognizes her unique bangs, the calculating look in her mahogany eyes, and the almost indistinguishable shock creeping up behind her usually straight-set expression. He can barely breathe as the recognition seeps in; she's never caught with her hair down.

"_Lieutenant?_"

_**Unexpected, 1914**_

Lieutenant Hawkeye has never been so happy to see her own bed.

After a week in Central aiding some fellow officers in the tracking of an estranged serial killer, having to abandon her own work at home to do so, she's exhausted, and the pileup of paperwork she's sure to have after missing a week isn't aiding in lifting the weight of her eyelids.

Upon entering her home, she hears the clicking of claws against the wooden floor of her home, the sound coming steadily closer and closer to her. From the darkness of her kitchen comes a wiggling mound of fur. Riza bends down and greets him with open arms.

"Hey, Hayate." She smiles and pets her Shiba's head, allowing him to jump up and rest his front paws on her bent knee. "I guess the colonel managed to take care of you while I was gone, huh?" Black Hayate yips happily in response, tail wagging at his the sound of his owner's voice.

Standing up and opening her mouth wide in a yawn, Riza drops her suitcase right where she stands and makes a bee-line for her bedroom, hoping to covet a few hours of sleep before going to work.

She couldn't have been asleep for more than a few hours when she is awoken by what sounds like the opening of her front door; the light of dawn has just started leaking through her window. She opens her eyes wide and narrows them, concentrating on the ambient noises of her home and trying to distinguish whether what she heard was real or just a product of her imagination.

Then she hears the footsteps.

Next to her bed, Black Hayate has stirred and his head is now raised, lips bared in a snarl. A vibrating growl leaks from between his teeth. Now fully alert as well, Riza slowly reaches under her pillow and retrieves the handgun she keeps there at all times for intrusions just as this.

As quietly as possible, Hawkeye pulls her covers off her body and rises from her bed, consoling Hayate with a gentle pat. She inches closer to the door of her room with the gun held out in front of her, both of her hands on the handle, one finger on the trigger. Using her foot, she gently pushes the slightly-ajar door open enough for her to slip into the hallway.

Just about seven feet away, standing near her kitchen table, is a tall figure wearing something like a trench coat. Their feet shift, sounding like boots. Riza raises the gun a bit higher and silently clicks the safety off.

She slides her feet across the floor to make as little noise as possible, getting closer and closer to the intruder with every passing second. Being that the shades of the only window in her kitchen are closed, her house is still quite dark.

As she gets within four feet of the figure, it still seems unaware of her presence. Another pair of steps, and she's only three feet away, then two.

Beneath her feet, the floor creaks.

The trench-coated man reacts immediately to the sound. Within half a second he whips himself around, dark hair flying in the wind, raising a gloved hand above his head and putting his thumb against his middle finger as if to snap. Just as quickly, Riza raises the gun to his head, right between his eyes. Riza brings her eyes up to his face to examine the intruder, taking note of his widened black irises that are crossed in their attempt to focus on her gun.

Closing her eyes, Riza sighs in obvious aggravation, relaxing her grip on her gun. "Damn it, Colonel!"

Mustang raises an eyebrow as he recognizes her long blonde hair and hawk-like eyes, lowering his hand after doing so. As if to anger her even more, he smirks obnoxiously and makes a small noise of laughter. "Well good morning to you too, Lieutenant," he chuckles, still looking at the gun that is still set between his eyes.

With an angry grunt, Hawkeye lowers her gun and turns the safety back on, her brown eyes still locked on his. "What are you doing in my house?" She almost yells, at a loss as to how and why her superior is in her house at such an early hour.

Mustang eyes her with slight confusion. "You asked me to take care of Hayate for you while you were gone," he informs her as if she'd forgotten, waving the spare key she'd given him over her head.

Riza sighs and clutches her gun at her side. "Perhaps," she grumbles. "But if you couldn't already tell I'm back now." As an afterthought she adds, "Sir."

Roy blinks as if that concept has just crossed his mind at that very moment. "I see," he says authoritatively. He clears his throat and brushes his chest with his hands. "Well, I'd best be off. I've got plenty to do before work."

Hawkeye almost laughs at his obvious lie. She knows for a fact that the colonel is only up this early because he thought Hayate still required attention, so she can guess that he's going back home to doze off for a few hours before arriving at work, most likely, in his normal, tardy fassion. Despite this, though, she squelches the urge to laugh and raises a hand in salute instead. "Until work then, sir."

Roy deposits her spare key on her kitchen table and raises a hand in farewell as he walks to the door. "See you at work," he replies casually. Then, as he makes it to the door and grasps the handle in one hand, he stops. "Oh, and Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir?"

He turns half of his head towards her, making his wry smirk visible. He motions with a gloved hand to her fitting t-shirt and barely knee-length cotton shorts. "Nice pajamas."

Colonel mustang barely slips out of her front door before she turns her gun's safety off and aims it at where his head was just a millisecond earlier.

_**Healing, 1915**_

The hospital room is quiet.

Not terribly so, however; there is the ambient sounds of the city seeping in from the open window and the murmurs of nurses conversing in the halls. He can hear nearly everything that occurs around him, even the turn of a creaky wheel chair rolling a patient through the hospital, whether it be due to their desire to leave their room or out of necessity due to broken limbs.

After the loss of his sight, Roy Mustang must rely solely on his other senses, all of which have been heightened to some extent. The improvement of his senses of smell and taste are somewhat unwelcome in the hospital however; the mixture of bedpans and antiseptic is not one to be reckoned with, and, as everyone who's ever eaten in will say, hospital food is rather ghastly.

There are times when he yearns for his sight, like when his comrades enter the room to see him and converse. Or on those late nights when neither he nor his Lieutenant can find sleep, opting to talk in hushed whispers instead. He can feel her eyes on him, most likely concerned, and hates knowing that he can't return the scattered glances, and, an even more horrible idea, that he may never physically see her again.

The two of them would talk about nearly anything, from their rough pasts and the inevitable, difficult future to come to Hayate's newly acquired and rather strange eating habits. He silently wishes that he could see during these times, but alas, The Truth has left him sightless.

In this seemingly bottomless pit of cons that his forced opening of the portal caused, there is but a few lights in the darkness.

One of the most prominent, to Mustang at least, is when he can hear the light, even breathing of the woman in the bed next to his as she sleeps peacefully, her wounds not bothering her at that very moment. At those moments, knowing that she is resting contently is enough to make the battered and beaten man feel almost content himself. When he listens to her while she's enveloped serene rest, he can release the breath he wasn't even aware he was holding captive in his lungs, able to relax due to the knowledge that his dearest subordinate is safe; not being chased and beaten by homunculi, not being captured by "leftover" Fuhrer candidates or worse – he momentarily grips his bed sheets with the strength of a steel trap – having her throat slit by one of them. No. Instead, she's free from harm and on the path to health, a fact the Colonel can be certain of, a fact that helps him rest easy as well.

_**Post-War Rebellion, late 1915**_

The hooded criminal grabs her by the wrist and slams her into the brick wall, making her accidently drop the gun in her other hand and causing the hair clip restricting her hair to open and clatter to the ground, making her pristine golden hair fall to her shoulders and mix with the blood dripping from behind one of her ears.

"_Lieutenant!_"

Roy elbows his assailant in the jaw, sending him reeling backwards. Before he can snap, effectively ending the poor man's life, a lone bullet sails into his skull, making his neck snap back and his legs to collapse like a rag doll.

Riza pulls her other gun out of her hidden holster at the small of her back and raises it up to its sister pistol, arms straight. He observes the hard determination on her face as she pulls the trigger of either gun at outrageous speeds, the backwards flicking of her wrists the only sign of recoil. She spins on her heels and pistol whips the nearest enemy in the neck, making him fall to his knees and giving her a straight shot at the man behind him. Mustang watches as she moves this way and that, able to fire her gun at any angle and hit the target every time no matter how uneven her footing may appear. Her grey, multi-pocketed, bloodstained jacket flies out behind her as she turns this way and that, her blonde strands whipping across her face. It's like a dance, the way she weaves through the tight alley and takes down man after man. A dangerous tango that begins with many dancers and ends with just one. Roy is frozen as he tries to keep his jaw from dropping, hand still above his head and poised to snap.

After what couldn't have been a minute, the last man falls just ten feet from her smoking guns. Riza sighs shortly and turns her gaze back to him. "Actually, general," she begins as she empties her empty ammo clips and slams two new ones into her guns, the refreshed clips hidden somewhere on her utility belt. She raises her guns again as a new wave of rebels flood from the entry to the alley, a ghost of a smirk on her face. "It's captain."

Roy smirks; he'll have to get used to the title change that came with her recent promotion. He raises his hands to prepare to send a fiery jet of crackling death at the men foolish enough to rush the most dangerous officers of the Amestrian military, no longer transfixed by his subordinate's amazing shooting skills.

"Of course. My mistake, _Captain_ Hawkeye."

_**Victory Celebration, mid -1916**_

It's been but a year, only just three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days, barely over fifty weeks since Father was torn from his imaginary pedestal and thrown into where he truly belonged: rotting in the epitome of shame, the incarnate of evil left to boil in his own ambition for the rest of his vile nonexistence. Despite the short amount of time that has passed since that momentous day, The Promised Day, to be more exact, the government has, for some odd reason, found throwing an anniversary ball to be completely appropriate; General Mustang can guess that Fuhrer Grumman had a large part in that.

The people around him move as if puppets controlled by an unearthly force, the invisible strings latched onto their limbs and running up thousands of miles to whatever godly being lives above the Earth, the ends in his hands as he maneuvers his creations as he has since their placement on his planet.

General Roy Mustang snorts behind the rim of his champagne glass; alchemy has shown him where the true power of the Earth lies: the faithful and steadfast hands of science. Atheism is a common system of belief for alchemists, and he is no exception. Religion is too corrupted for his liking, too moldable and manipulative.

The puppets move in groups of two, shuffling and spinning across the vast dance floor of the overly-ornate and borderline pompous ballroom constructed for large parties such as this. The men hold their women by the waist and hand, keeping them a respectful distance apart but still sharing some sort of estranged intimacy. Mustang swirls his forgotten champagne in the pristine glass, the liquid gold not appetizing to him at all, or, at least, not as he watches the near robotic movements of the mixture of military officers, civilians, and higher-ups from other countries.

That must be the government's true reason for throwing this party: to schmooze other countries' leaders into signing all sorts of official treaties regarding peace, possible alliances, and of course, money. Maybe an ignorant fool would believe that the elegant soiree was planned to celebrate victory, but Mustang's intelligent and newly-healed eyes can see the façade before him: an opportunity to create alliances and trade partners through the foreign leaders' throats, all wrapped up in deceptively elegant packaging.

Roy brings his heel up and rests it on his opposite knee, slouching slightly in his chair and depositing his alcohol on the table, undoubtedly abandoning the expensive, wheat-colored liquid for the rest of the night. He tugs at the collar of his tuxedo, feeling like a pawn in the great game of governmental chess. Mustang shakes his head at that thought; he's a knight or bishop at the very least.

In his peripheral vision, he sees a flash of brown and red taking a seat on the chair opposite his, the two of them separated only by the table.

"Have you heard anything yet, sir?" Her voice is flaccid, an obvious attempt to make any bystander believe that they are partaking in nothing more than idle chit-chat.

Mustang sighs and rubs his closed eyes, a habit he picked up after living without sight for over three months. "I'm afraid not, captain," he replies in a tone displaying his false lack of interest. He purses his lips slightly; she'd been promoted more than six months ago, but "captain" does not roll off his tongue as easily as "lieutenant" used to. He, with slight humor, notes how she stilled mistakenly called him "colonel" for only the first few days after his promotion, meanwhile he's still forgetting her change in rank half a year later; she's always been better at adapting than he has, this he knows for a fact.

Mustang turns his head towards his companion for the first time since she'd taken her seat across from him. She's staring calculatedly at the crowed of dancing fools, her elbows on the table and chin resting on her weaved fingers. The three quarters of her face visible to him displays her boredom; her intelligent copper eyes have closed to half slits, but he still has no doubt that she is as alert as ever. Her hair is bound in a complicated bun atop her head, a few curly ringlets straying free from the otherwise well-crafted mound of blonde silk atop her head. Her long bangs also rebel from the hairstyle, thrown across her face as they usually are, partially obscuring her left eye. A rather expensive-looking, pole-shaped hairpiece has been pushed through the bun itself, a small, beautifully speckled downy feather hanging from either edge of the piece, no doubt in relation to her family name. The hair ornament matches the style of her sleeveless, ankle-length dress. The perfectly mixed pallet of many different shades of red and brown mixed with a few lines of white have turned her body into a bird's wing, each of her movements shifting the fabric in a way akin to that of wind flowing through feathers.

The general feels terribly underdressed sitting at the same table as his elegantly styled subordinate, what with her looking so smart and sophisticated while he could be any man at any sort of semi-formal event. Although, he notices, the cloth the Fuhrer himself gave to Mustang to fold and slip neatly into his coat pocket possesses colors that match very closely to those of Hawkeye's dress. Mustang can remember Grumman muttering something about his granddaughter still being available while he handed the fabric to the younger man. Mustang smiles and puts a few gloved fingers to the attractively colored fabric resting above his heart.

Crafty old bastard.

"Why don't you dance, lieu-er, captain?" Well, that wasn't as smooth as he'd hoped it would be. Damn it.

Hawkeye shrugs, the movement barely visible due to the fact that her slim shoulders barely even shifted. "No man who has asked me to dance has really caught my interest for more than a second," she replies lamely, lack of interest evident.

Roy chuckles and sits up in his seat. "Well of course they haven't." He muses, "You probably intimidate them, what with your fancy clothes and hidden weapons." As a late afterthought, he adds, "How many have you adorned tonight? Three?"

Captain Hawkeye's expression doesn't appear to change to anyone else who happened to be looking at her face at that moment, but Mustang noted the softening of her eyes and the slight raise of her cheek muscles: Riza smiled. "I suppose that makes sense," she agrees monotonously. He thinks he detects laughter in her keen eyes as she adds, "And no, just two tonight, sir."

Mustang laughs a bit more heartily this time and his coal eyes linger on the intricately carved curves of his assistant's face before moving to the many chandeliers above their heads, the shining glass reflecting a whole slew of colors from the lights mixed between them, illuminating the immense room almost too much, practically giving him a headache.

Hawkeye reaches across the table and he feels a slim finger tap his arm. "Sir?"

He turns and gives her his attention. "Hhm?"

She narrows her eyes as they follow something Roy's eyes will never be strong enough to see. "Lieutenant General Armstrong and one of the Xingese nobles have taken to the floor."

Mustang chortles, the sound slightly muffled his gloved hands. "How'd anyone manage to lure that beast of a woman out to dance?"

Hawkeye captures his gaze seriously, and she intones, silent enough for only him to hear, "They could be discussing something involving Amestrian politics."

Something in Roy's mind clicks and gets the mental gears going. As a future candidate for Fuhrer, he needs to be kept up to date on all aspects of the country he hopes to rule within the near future. "Hmm…interesting. I'd love to hear what they're saying." He pushes himself off his chair and meanders around the table until he's standing next to Hawkeye's chair. "I'd go out and try to listen, but it'd be pretty odd for a man to venture out there alone, don't you think, captain?" Mustang shrugs in false defeat, a strangely confident look on his face.

Riza's knowing eyebrow raises ever so slightly, but the rest of her face maintains its usual stoic demeanor. "Are you insinuating something, sir?"

"Is that a yes, then?" He asks with the slightest of teasing mixed into his bantering tone, his hand held out towards her.

Hawkeye's gaze jumps from where Armstrong must be to Mustang's hand just a foot or so from her face. "You'll end up ordering me to, anyway," she supposes, but he can guess that she doesn't mind based on the calm blanketing her skeptical tone. Her smaller hand accepts his invitation.

Mustang leads her to the floor and turns her towards him, allowing a hand to rest on her hips and one of hers to reach up and grasp his shoulder, her other hand clasped tight by his. They spin about the floor, maneuvering in such a way that allows them to hear the political banter of nearly every noble couple dancing around them. He's shocked by her hidden talents; he'd never guess that she'd prove to be such a skillful dancer. She steps back a few feet, pulling him with her past the Fuhrer himself as he charms the mother of a powerful foreign leader.

After a while, though, Mustang forgets his original reason for dragging her out there; as she leans up to whisper something important in his ear, something regarding politics that he can't fully concentrate on, she sends her distinct scent of vanilla and gunpowder into his nostrils, dulling his senses even more so, and he thinks briefly that this woman will be the death of him without even having to fire her gun.

_**Checkmate, late 1916**_

"So Mustang," Fuhrer Grumman starts, moving his knight across the chess board.

"So Fuhrer," Mustang responds in an equal tone, moving his rook to block whatever trap the older man had been planning.

Grumman chuckles lightly and moves a different piece, his bishop, to create the trap that he'd truly been planning. The general furrows his dark brows and, with lack of anything else to do, takes the last of Grumman's pawns, knowing that trying to stop his inevitable loss would be a futile battle.

Sure enough, Grumman takes the victory in just one more move. "Checkmate," he announces, though he doesn't sound so shocked to be the winner. He clears his throat and touches the corners of his bushy grey mustache. "As I was saying," he continues as he starts to reset the pieces on the board. The light leaks through the uncurtained window of the Fuhrer's office, illuminating the room and then some. "What do you think of that silly fraternization law?"

Mustang sputters, chocking on the tea he'd just poured down his throat. The searing liquid leaves a trail of lava from his lips to his stomach. He coughs awkwardly, trying to cease the burn the unfortunately early sip of his tea had caused as well as the flustered thoughts in his head. He eventually manages to utter one thing: "Sir?"

Grumman shrugs slightly and takes his first move after replacing all of the pieces to their starting positions. "I'm just curious as to your opinion," he intones casually.

In the distant catacombs of the complicated labyrinth residing in Mustang's skull, he hears her rare laughter, his subconscious mind reminding him at the same time that she's barely twenty feet away, standing guard at the door. "My opinion?" He swallows before moving his first piece. "I think the law is reasonable but unnecessary."

The Fuhrer nods slowly and pushes one of his pawns forward with an aged finger. "Elaborate."

"Well," Roy begins with the slightest bit of caution in his voice. He can all but feel the golden-brown eyes staring at him, burning holes through his back, as they always do. "I think that, despite the obvious risk of conflicting interests, two professional people could easily keep their relations separate from their work."

"So the law should be eradicated?"

Hope leaps into his throat, burning his larynx yet again. He reminds himself to remain professional as he replies casually, "Perhaps not fully, but exceptions could be made."

"Hmm." Grumman sits with his fingers laced under his nose, pondering either the chess game or Roy's words, Mustang can't be sure which. His old eyes flick about the board, and with the relocation of one of his pieces and a flick of his wrist, he has bested the general yet again. "Check mate."

Roy narrows his eyes in obvious frustration, coal eyes like flints. "Dammit. How many times can I be bested by an old man?"

Grumman laughs lowly, choosing to ignore the comment about his age. "As of now, 122, but then again, who's counting?"

Mustang chortles slightly and pushes himself to his feet. "As much fun as loosing is," he says with a hint of sarcasm. "I really should be going." He bows slightly before raising his right hand in a respectful salute. "Thank you for considering my opinion, sir."

Grumman leans back in his chair, a friendly smirk on his face. He raises a finger and adjusts the placement of his thin-framed glasses on his nose. "Anytime, General Mustang."

Mustang nods curtly and takes the few steps toward the door. He slips through it almost silently, being sure to close it gently behind him.

Captain Hawkeye unclasps her hands and looks at him with her keen copper eyes. "How did it go, sir?"

Mustang scratches the back of his head, eyes falling to the floor. "I lost. Twice, actually."

To his displeasure, he hears her chortle just slightly in her attempt to contain her laughter.

The general and his adjutant walk in step down the hallway, never moving more than two feet apart but not venturing any closer.

"Did the Fuhrer have anything interesting to say?" She inquires, seeming slightly interested .

Mustang blinks, the Fuhrer's most recent words echoing in his mind, along with his previous suggestion that Roy take his granddaughter's hand in marriage. Despite this, he just shoves his hands into his pockets and exhales calmly, clinging to his suavity by chipped fingernails.

"No, not really."

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**Hey there babes! This was sooo much fun to write, and I think I may add more if you guys want me to!**

**Reviews are appreciated and rewarded with more drabbles!**

**Forever yours,**

**CrossCountryChick 16**


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